From a Welfare State to a Welfare Society: The Changing Context of Social Policy in a Postmodern Era - Softcover

Rodger, John J.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0333730380 ISBN 13: 9780333730386

Publisher: Red Globe Press, 2000

Synopsis

The welfare state is being subjected to fundamental re-appraisal. It is now commonly argued that modern Western societies require a new 'moral economy' in which responsibility for welfare and social care is shifted from the state to the family and community. This text critically assesses the range of academic and political debates around the questions such a shift raises, exploring how far social solidarity is possible when social inequality has become so in evidence in the last two decades of the twentieth century.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

The welfare state is being subjected to fundamental reappraisal. It is now
commonly argued that modern Western societies require a new 'moral economy', whether one of rediscovered charity and family values and increased welfare pluralism, or of rebuilt communities and a welfare system which provides a 'hand up' rather than a 'hand out'.

But do contemporary societies have the social solidarity and infrastructure
of caring networks to replace the overarching capacity of the state to
deliver social welfare? This text critically assesses the range of academic
and political argument and analysis that surround the much debated shift in
responsibility for welfare from the state to civil society. It both charts the changing economic and political context of social policy at the beginning of the twenty-first century in an era of post-Fordism, post-emotionalism, globalisation and rising social exclusion, and it links its discussion of practical welfare policies wtih increasingly salient theoretical debates around, for instance, changing conceptions of citizenship, social solidarity and community.

From a Welfare State to a Welfare Society situates its analysis in the
conflict between ideas from the present and past about the future. The
clash between modernism, anti-modernism and post-modernism as ways of seeing and approaching social policy is a recurrent theme in the text, which
centres on questions and debates of interest and value to a range of
students of social policy, sociology and politics.

About the Author:

JOHN J RODGER is Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Social Policy at Paisley University, Scotland. He is the author of Family Life and Social Control: A Sociological Perspective.

About this edition

• Publisher: Red Globe Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0333730380
• ISBN 13: 9780333730386
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224
• Editor: Campling Jo